After my last night in the Philippines and being scared of missing yet another flight, I was ready and excited to finally flying to Bali ! So excited that I forgot my phone behind, charging in the living room...I only realised when I was arriving at the airport. It was even more annoying when the security lady asked me my ticket so that I could get inside the airport. My ticket was in my phone....So I had to go to the Jetstar office to print my ticket. They had no printer. I still had my tablet so took a picture of my confirmation email, on the screen of the Jetstar staff. Handy...

I arrived in Singapore at 3 in the afternoon and my flight to Bali wasn't until 3.45am. So my big question was: What can I do ? I was in Singapore at the beginning of january so visiting wasn't a priority. And the sticky weather is definitely not for me. I had a look at the internet and saw that there was a swimming pool at the transfer area. Inside the airport. After the security... After a visit to the information desk, Jestar desk, another information desk and again Jetstar, I finally managed an early check in in order to get a boarding pass and go inside the departure areas.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the shops and then going to the swimming pool. That's a pretty interesting experience ! And time flew as I swam, read a book and talked to an australian former diving instructor for a couple of hours. I had a 2 hours nap in one of the lounges and my 13 hours tranfer ended up being very smooth.

I arrived at 7am in Bali, exhausted from my non existing night. I eventually found Ari, my friend Maki's friend who came to pick me up with his taxi to take me to Ubud.

My first 'landmark' in Ubud was the bank for I forgot to get my card out of the ATM (it didn't work at the airport and I got excited by the fact that I got money this time). Not the most fun but useful for sure !

I then went to my homestay, a gorgeous one, called Ojek's and unpacked. A single room for a backpacker on the road for a while does that. I unpacked, put my clothes in the cupboard and the rest, all over the room. Emptying a backpack is a great feeling sometimes !!

My stay in Ubud was pretty quiet.I didn't do very much. My main activities were window shopping/shopping, eating in nice restaurant (OMG, Buda Bali !!!), meeting up with my long-time-no-seen friend Maki (I met Maki in Australia, when I did my DMT, 8 years ago and hadn't seen here since), checking out the Monkey forest (where I got chased by an unhappy mummy for taking pics of her little one but also scratched by another one, keen on grabbing anything he could from me, including bracelet and eye). Ubud in indeed the perfect place to chill, do nothing and enjoy the good food (I got traumatised by the Philippines so I needed a good catch up !).

I also met a few really nice people, girls/women, again, as guys don't travel alone, most of the time. I only met 3 or 4 guys in 5 months, who were travelling alone and soooo many girls/women !! Anyway, Ubud offers a lot of classes, like Indonesian classes, yoga, cooking, jewellery making, etc. I was gonna learn Indonesian but never heard back from the teacher so I had to learn by myself.

I stayed about 10 days in Ubud, just chilling, really. Then, I had planned to join another friend, Sandra. I met Sandra during my seasonnaire years in Alpe d'Huez, about 14 years ago and again, we never met since. She's been living half of the year in Bali and the other half in France, for the past 6 years and had just become a Divemaster. She was in Nusa Lembongan. Also, as a sort of a coincidence, I had seen on the PADI website that a dive centre was looking for a french speaking diving instructor there so I applied, not being too sure of the outcome. Within 24 hours I had an interview planned the day of my arrival in Nusa Lembongan.